Sustainability Initiative Part 6

HEALTH- CARE WASTES 6

HEALTH-CARE WASTES

Student’s Name

Institution

Course

Running Head: HEALTH- CARE WASTES 1

Date

Create an infographic that illustrates each type of waste in the health care industry. Include descriptions of the waste, sources for the waste, how much is generated per year, how it is disposed, and solutions for reducing it.

Sources of healthcare waste

· Hospital and health services

· Laboratories and studies stations

· Mortuary and autopsy stations

· Animal study and testing laboratories

· Blood banks

Healthcare industry

Types of wastes

· Infectious wastes

· Pathological waste

· Sharp wastes

· Chemical wastes

· General and non-hazardous waste

· Pharmaceutical waste

· Cytotoxic waste

Reduction methods

· Recycling

· Creating awareness on risks of healthcare wastes

· Strategizing plans on controlling waste products

Disposal methods

Plastic bins

Burning the waste materials

It is acknowledged that of the entire waste created through health-care activities, 85 percent is considered to be general and non-hazardous waste. The other 15 percent is considered to be dangerous materials that may end up to be toxic and infectious to the people. It is approximated that 16 billion injections are then administered annually across the world despite that not all used needles and syringes are well disposed after usage. When open burning is considered as a way of destroying such materials to avoid infections, there might be emissions of dioxins and particulate issues. Thus, there should be measures to make sure there is safe and surrounding management of health care wastes. This is likely to prevent contrary health and surrounding effects from the wastes entailing unintentional release of chemical to the environment then securing the health of patients, workers and the community in general (Diaz et al., 2018).

Types of wastes

Both wastes and by-products entails a varied variety of resources as given bellow;

Infectious wastes

This kind of wastes entails contaminated wastes with blood and maybe other bodily fluids and even stocks of infectious matters from laboratory work. These are things like swabs, bandages etc.

Pathological waste

These wastes are made up of matters like human tissues, organs and even fluids.

Sharp wastes

These are objects like needles, syringes, blades, disposable scalpels etc.

Chemical wastes

Chemical wastes are inform of solvents and maybe reagents used during preparation for laboratory activities, disinfectant, sterilants and heavy metals within medical devices.

Pharmaceutical wastes

These are substances like unused, expired and contaminated drugs.

Cyctotoxic waste

These are kind of wastes that contains genotoxic matters. They includes substances like cyctotoxic drugs used to cure cancer and their metabolites.

Radioactive wastes

These wastes includes products contaminated through radionuclides materials.

General and non-hazardous waste

Theese are acknowledged to be wastes materials that does not pose any certain biological chemical or danger.

Main sources of health care wastes

Much of the health care wastes comes from hospital and health services, laboratories and studies stations, and mortuary and autopsy stations, animal study and testing laboratories, blood banks and finally from nursing homes for the elderly people. According to the existing information given by WHO, high income nations are noted to be creating an average of 0.5 kg of dangerous wastes in every hospital bed on daily basis. The less developed nations on the other hand are generating 0.2 kg. Nevertheless, both dangerous and non-dangerous wastes are not separated for the well up and poor nations hence coming up with the real amount of dangerous wastes much higher.

Disposal methods

Within the health care settings, the disposable bins situated strategically where used materials are placed after usage for disposable. In most case, such material are burned hence leading air pollutions to the environments. At some point, the healthcare wastes are not well disposed since they are thrown un-treated and can end up causing harm to the people around.

Reduction methods

The health care management needs to have high attention and diligence in order to evade adverse health results connected with poor practices such as exposure to infectious substances or agents (Muluken, Haimanot & Mesafint, 2014). Another approach that can be used to reduce wastes products in the health care industries includes coming up with plans and systems together with firm oversight and control in order to enhance waste segregation. Further, there is need to focus on risks concerns based on health care wastes to ensure people are not at the risk of the same. Some of those products can be recycled as way of reducing waste products in the surrounding (Bush, 2007).

References

Bush, R. W. (2007). Reducing waste in US health care systems. Jama, 297(8), 871-874.

Diaz, L. F., Eggerth, L. L., Enkhtsetseg, S. H., & Savage, G. M. (2008). Characteristics of healthcare wastes. Waste management, 28(7), 1219-1226.

Muluken, A., Haimanot, G., & Mesafint, M. (2014). Healthcare waste management practices among healthcare workers in healthcare facilities of Gondar town, Northwest Ethiopia.